Los Angeles history

Matt Weinstock, July 11, 1959

Dear Friend

It's too hot for indignation but maybe, with a cool drink, we can muster a little pique.

I
refer to a certain type of unsolicited direct mail pitch. A large
envelope shows up in the mailbox. How the outfit got your name and
address you don't know.

Inside is a mimeographed letter
addressed to "Dear Friend," stating you have been recommended for
membership in a "new, exciting and convenient way of shopping."
Superimposed in large type is the admonition, "Send no money."

TO GET IN ON THIS
excitement you will want the catalog and to get the catalog all you
have to do is fill out the enclosed application and return it in the
reply envelope. This is where the pique comes in.

The
application wants to know your name, address, age, whether single,
married, separated or divorced, the name of your employer and how long
you've worked there. So far, routine. But then it wants to know, "What
are your present earnings?" And the name of the bank where you have an
account.

Remember, you didn't send for anything, you don't want anything -- only to be left alone.

I say it's an impertinence and an invasion of privacy.

::

A MAN NAMED EDDIE asked his wife to go deep-sea fishing with him over the week end and got this evasive and somewhat double-edged reply:

"No,
I don't think I will. I'm afraid I'd get seasick. Besides, there've
been a lot of boat accidents and I don't want to get dumped in the
water with all those sharks around. You go, though, but leave your
wrist watch home."

::

SAFETY FIRSTTo drink and drive is treacherousFor accidents are grimSo he who drinks just like a fishShould park his car and swim. -- PEARL ROWE

::

DEATH OF retired
Adm. Harry E. Yarnell in Newport, R.I., this week brought a grateful
eulogy from George Krain of the SC photo department.

Krain, a
White Russian, was a newsreel cameraman in the Far East when the
Japanese bombed the gunboat Panay in the Yangtze River in 1937. Because
he photographed the pillage of Nanking he became a fugitive from the
Japanese. Five of his countrymen were executed.

He appealed for
help and Adm. Yarnell, commander of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, got visas
for him and his wife to enter this country.

"He saved our lives," Krain said. "We will never forget him."

::

THE HEAT
is getting to people. A man entering Spring St. building stopped,
muttered something, then reached down and pulled a blue tie out of one
pants leg. . . . And a painting publicist, returning from lunch, gasped
to his companion, "I'll race you to the air conditioning!"

::

EDWARD L. LASH,
3751 Bagley Ave., L.A., survivor of the Norway hotel fire in which 17
were killed, writes Nellie Byrne of the Byrne Travel Service from
Edinburgh, "I think the 22nd of June was our lucky day. We arrived at
the Stalheim Hotel and for the first time on our trip were given a room
on the first floor. The fire broke out on the second floor and spread
upwards. Three in our group were burned to death. Others were killed
jumping from windows."

::

FOOTNOTES --
A photog on another paper always puts his glasses and keys on a desk
when he returns from an assignment and heads for his darkroom. If he
wonders why his key ring has gotten so heavy lately, his colleagues
have been adding a key a day. . . . Regarding supposedly unused watch
pockets in men's trousers, R.R. Auerbach of La Jolla Sportswear says,
"We don't try to figure out the whys -- all we know is people want them
in, used or not". . . .A lady Mike Molony knows malapropped to her dog,
"If you don't behave I'll pick you up by the scum of the neck and throw
you out of the house!"